Crooked Roads

by Alec Cizak

  The Gary officers looked at each other. They offered their best impressions of confusion and ignorance.

  “We didn’t see any pick-up.”

  Ron sighed. He was sick of people thinking he was too stupid to figure out when they were lying to him. “You didn’t see that red Dodge? There was four men in the back with shotguns, wearing masks. They looked like ghosts.”

  Calvin shrugged. “No idea.”

  Ron stepped backwards, toward his cruiser. “Mind if I drive into town and have a look?”

  Calvin shook his head. “Best thing for you is to head back to Haggard.”

  Ron stopped.

  Calvin’s partner rested his free hand on his pistol.

  Calvin said, “No need to go begging the Man to dig us early graves. Not after the shit we’ve been through.”

  “Lake County Sheriff’s Department’s got jurisdiction.”

  “That so?” Calvin reached down and unfastened the button keeping his gun in his holster.

  Ron considered his odds. “All right,” he said.

  Calvin smiled. “Good seeing you, soldier.”

  Ron got in his car, turned around and drove slowly toward Lake Arthur. He kept an eye on the rearview, hoping Calvin and his partner would move on. They didn’t.

  As he approached Old Ridge Road, he saw an ambulance from St. Mary’s near the Gorski house. Sheriff Dudek’s car was parked across the street. Families gathered on the lawn.

  He pulled up behind Sheriff Dudek’s cruiser. Bud Gorski’s neighbors let him know what happened. He got to the mailbox posted at the end of the driveway and stopped. The front door opened and two paramedics carried a body, covered with a white sheet, to the ambulance. The sheriff followed behind the medics. When he saw Ron, he pushed past a crowd of huddled wives.

  “Where you been, Deputy?”

  Ron told him.

  The sheriff studied him the way his father did when he was younger, just before he got drafted and all he ever did was drink and fight and get thrown into the drunk tank. “I wonder if you had done like you was told and kept to Haggard, if Bud Gorski might be alive right now.”

  Ron wanted to get inside, to talk to Lynn. He tried moving around the sheriff.

  “Where you headed?”

  He nodded toward the house.

  “Whatever for?”

  Ron looked at him.

  “If you was so concerned about happenings in Haggard, you sure as hell wouldn’t have taken a joy ride up to Gary.”

  “I told you…”

  The sheriff got close enough for Ron to smell Wild Turkey on his breath. “Not a thing in there needing your attention.” He waited for him to stand down. Then he strolled over to his cruiser, telling regular folks there was “nothing more to gawk at.”

  A third paramedic helped Lynn outside. Ron strained to make eye contact with her. There were too many people between them. She seemed dazed, stumbling and twisting her head side to side, as though she were expecting another attack. She reminded him of older women in Vietnam. The ones who helped stack or bury their dead.

  “Who’s watching the boys?” he said.

  Sheila Hyatt, who lived two doors from the Gorski’s, said, “Beth’s got them over at her place. Scooped them up before anybody goofed and let them know what happened.”

  The paramedics closed the doors on the ambulance. Lynn and her husband were taken to St. Mary’s where a doctor could file the necessary papers, making Bud’s death official.

  Three

  The morning after Bud Gorski was murdered, a knock fell on Ron’s door while he was eating a bowl of Quaker Oates. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of the old red-bricked building Haddager’s was located in. There wasn’t much furniture. Just a table and a single chair to go with it and a cot he picked up from a surplus store in Chicago. He was still in his boxers. He scratched his front and back on his way to the door. As he opened it, he got the idea it was Lynn, that she had come to tell him she wanted to get married. He decided he would say yes. He wouldn’t even make her sweat it.

  Three men in jeans, flannel shirts, and potato sacks over their heads shoved him into his room. One of them said, “Mind yourself. He’s a vet.” They kicked him and punched him until he collapsed. Two of the thugs stepped on his right arm, one at the wrist, the other at his shoulder. The third man produced a tire iron.

  “This here’s a suggestion.” He knelt down and bashed Ron’s arm. When he stopped, he wiped blood off of the iron and said, “Poke your snout in the wrong place one more time. I dare you.”

  The men left the apartment without closing the door.

  Ron caught his breath and rolled onto his left arm. He pushed himself off the ground. He would have to go down to the drug store to use their phone. Most likely, he hoped, someone would catch sight of the bone poking through his skin and call an ambulance for him.

  * * *

  Ron Quinn’s parents split before he ever got to know his mom. While he was fighting the war, his dad got lung cancer, probably from working in the cement factory on the east side of Haggard. Most of the folks who earned a living there ended their days in hospital beds with tubes in their throats.

  When he returned from the jungle, the women his age were already married. The men who had stayed behind, who had weaseled out with money or left the country, looked at him funny. They probably felt guilty. He dated Lynn in high school and when he ran into her a few days after coming home, he realized he had what she needed. He believed she could do the same for him. But her kids would never be his kids. She was hooked on something Bud provided. Maybe Bud was smarter than him. Maybe Lynn was smarter, too. Ron tossed and turned while he slept because he knew he was, and always would be, alone.

  He woke up at St. Mary’s. A nurse was changing bags of fluids pouring into an I.V. plugged into the back of his left hand. They must have been giving him morphine. He couldn’t feel a thing. Lynn stood by the only window. He thought of the last night they had made love.

  “Hey baby,” he said. His throat felt like it was filled with rocks.

  She drifted over and ran her fingers along his right arm, which was covered in a cast. “We’re putting Bud in the ground tomorrow,” she said. “Catholic funeral.”

  Ron said, “I’ll be there.”

  “Doubt they’ll let you loose from here that soon.”

  He asked her what had happened. She explained that they were asleep when the shooting started. She said Bud’s blood sprayed her face and the bullet angled off into their headboard. Then she asked, “Who did this to you?”

  “Pretty sure it was the same people.”

  “Figured so.”

  He told her how he chased the gun thugs to Gary.

  “State Road 53?”

  “What you thinking about, Lynn?”

  “Nothing.” She turned away from him.

  Another goddamn liar.

  Lynn stayed with him until the nurses kicked her out. They sneered when they spoke to her. Ron told them to back off. When she was gone, the head nurse whispered, “You two are going straight to hell.”

  * * *

  Ron was released from the hospital two days later. He missed Bud Gorski’s funeral. Sheriff Dudek told him to take it easy. The last thing Ronald Quinn wanted, though, was more time to himself. He went back to work the next day with a bottle of Darvocet hidden in his glove box. The sheriff called him to his office.

  “You clear, now?” He nodded toward a wooden chair on the other side of his desk.

  Ron declined the offer to sit. “What do you mean?”

  “Your job is to write tickets and chase the coloreds back up to Gary. You ain’t Mickey Spillane. You ain’t Sam Spade. And you sure as hell ain’t no hero. Confine yourself to Haggard, or find another way to pay your bills.”

  Neither man spoke for a moment. Then the sheriff repeated his first question.

  Ron thought he was stupid for even asking. The strike would be over, regardless of how it turned out
for Liberty or the workers, long before his arm mended. He assured the sheriff he wasn’t going to do anything but burn fuel, driving round and round Haggard city limits.

  * * *

  He parked in the lot of the Dairy Queen that night to take a nap. The air outside was freezing. He rolled the windows up and turned the heater on. The speaker on his police radio crackled and the night dispatch told him to get to the bridge on State Road 53.

  He flipped his lights on and raced over ice-coated roads. He passed Old Ridge and got a feeling things were never going to be the same. When he drove up to Lake Arthur and the iron bridge, there were a dozen squad cars from three different police agencies gathered, lights turning. Police walked off the side and down a slope toward the water. His eyes followed them. There was more activity by the shore. He parked and got out. The ground was slick from a sheer layer of ice.

  Sheriff Dudek stood among a group of Gary Municipal officers. Ron approached him. “What’s going on?”

  The sheriff directed his attention to the frozen lake, just beyond the edge of the bridge. A crane was hoisting a red pick-up truck from a crater in the ice. “Where you been tonight?”

  “Minding my own.”

  The sheriff said he believed him.

  The officers examining the truck made their way to the top of the bridge. One of them explained, “Front tires was shot out.”

  Sheriff Dudek took him aside. “Bud Gorski have any guns in his house?”

  Ron stuttered. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  The sheriff raised his chin and smiled. “Go get the Gorski broad. Bring her to the station.”

  Ron moped back to his cruiser. He remembered Bud walking the very same way. He got in the Ford, fired it up, turned around and drove toward Old Ridge Road.

  Most of the cars on the street were frosted over. The ice on Bud’s Chevelle had been cleared. Pieces of it were still breaking off and sliding down the windows. Ron parked in the driveway, to the side of Bud’s car. He approached the front door with his .38 already drawn, wondering if Lynn Gorski had it in her to shoot him. He knocked and waited.

  She let him in. She was wearing her coat and the twins were seated on the dull yellow couch in the living room, dressed in matching parkas. He looked at his watch. It was after midnight. “You fixing on taking the boys out for a milkshake?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. He crossed the room and noticed she was trying to hide three suitcases standing in the narrow hallway between the bedrooms. He pretended he wasn’t aware of them.

  “I just wanted to see the damage from the…” He glanced back at the boys. “Well, you know what I’m getting at.”

  She remained still. He slid past her and into the bedroom. He knelt down and studied the hole in the wall caused by the shot that killed Bud. He stood up and approached Bud’s open closet. The rifle rested on the shelf where it was supposed to be. The box of shells was turned on its side. Empty.

  Lynn stood in the doorway, staring at him.

  He reached up and took the Marlin down. “Baby,” he said. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was gone.

  The front door slammed shut.

  Ron Quinn took a deep breath. He put his finger in the hole in the wall across from the bed. Then he counted, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” At three Mississippi, he heard the engine on the Chevy rev. Ice cracked like thunder as the wheels rolled over it. He put the shotgun down and moseyed out of the house.

  He got in his cruiser and casually turned the sirens on. He took his time backing up and taking off after Lynn Gorski and her sons. He kept a good distance between them so that she wouldn’t panic and crash. She was smart and took Thirty-fifth Avenue to I-65. He followed her onto the highway and made sure she crossed the Illinois state line. He slowed down and watched the Chevy’s tail lights thin to darkness, hoping she’d have the sense to go all the way to Canada. Then he made a U-turn and drove back to Haggard. He grimaced, like he had bit into something awful, and rehearsed the lie he would tell to guarantee he never saw Lynn Gorski again.

  PATIENCE

  I didn’t normally go for blondes. I liked the dark-haired girls. Didn’t matter what ethnicity. Asian, White, Latina, whatever. But this broad, she walked in, sat down right next to me. Bleach-blonde. Matched the color her eyes turned anytime they caught what little light there was in the joint. I could tell by the way she dressed she was hooking for a living. Mini-skirt, six-inch heels, a halter-top so tight I wondered how she could breathe. That didn’t bother me.

  “My name is Patience,” she said. She shifted her legs in her sparkly little skirt. She did it slowly, giving me no choice but to watch and enjoy.

  And I did.

  She stuck out her hand in a half-dainty manner, like the streets hadn’t stripped her of an ounce of civility. I offered a sloppy shake, glancing past her, attempting to feign disinterest. “Stan Dillon,” I said.

  “Stan,” she said. She scooted as close to me as possible, making sure her legs brushed against mine. “What’s a stud like you doing all alone on a Friday night?”

  I shrugged, looked at the neon Budweiser clock hanging over the bottles behind the bar. “Nothing better to do, I guess.”

  “You a cop?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “You on duty?”

  I shook my head.

  “You guys make a lot of money, don’t you?”

  I howled. “Hey Travis,” I said, “Patience here thinks I’m rolling in the green.”

  The bartender tossed up his phony, Ed McMahon laugh and went back to counting change in the register.

  “I’ll bet you make enough to satisfy me,” Patience said. She ran a finger down my thigh and then stuck it in her mouth.

  “Is that right?” I said.

  She leaned in close, breathed fire into my ear and whispered, “How’d you like to get down with two girls tonight?”

  Wouldn’t have been nothing new for me. In fact, my second wife, Angela, left me precisely because I had got trapped in a sting the LA Times put together. A jackass investigative reporter busted in and snapped pictures of me and two Korean hookers in a massage parlor on La Brea. That was the reason the court didn’t give a damn about my side of the story.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “My friend Finesse will meet us at the Ramada on Wilshire.”

  * * *

  We drove a long time without conversation. Through Skid Row, past Little Tokyo, across Third and into the Rampart district. Canyons of lit up buildings from downtown to Koreatown. Patience put the car radio on KJAZ and whistled to tunes she’d obviously never heard before. Finally, I said, “So when’d you get to LA?”

  “What’s it matter?”

  A light rain made me concentrate more on the road than the conversation. I said, “I’ve never seen you at the 4200 before.”

  She stared out the window. “Finesse just told me about that joint. Said there were Johnnies there who were cool with girls like us.” She pulled a makeup kit out of her fake leopard skin purse and went to work on her face. My cop instincts started making tiny noises in the back of my head. I got to thinking I’d met her before.

  “Have I ever busted you?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Never been in the tank,” she said. “Not for this, at least.”

  “It’s just that sometimes I arrest a girl and she tries to get revenge by setting me up. I got to be safe, you know?”

  “A little paranoid?” she said.

  “This is LA,” I said, “land of flakes with a vendetta against the cops. You wouldn’t believe how many times these corrupt media people try to make us look bad.”

  “Relax, honey,” she said, “I just want to have some fun.” She put her hand on my leg.

  My cop instincts settled down. She was tiny. If she tried to pull something, I could overpower her easy enough, snuff her if I had to and dump her body somewhere in the Toy District. Nobody would notice in time. If they did ID her, nobody would
care.

  Whenever I got to thinking like that, I thought about how much I wanted to just kill myself. I had seen enough human garbage and enough humans being treated like garbage that I had lost faith in the idea that anything in this world was good. Sometimes I put my Glock in my mouth, closed my eyes, and imagined pulling the trigger. Maybe I was too much of an egomaniac to do it. Maybe, somewhere in my stinking head, I thought something would happen and people would change and the world would change with them. Then I usually had a drink to cover up all those ideas. Last thing LAPD needed was a cop with a soul.

  I focused on Patience’s legs. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She did a pretty good job hiding her age, but too much time in the sun gave it away. The spider webs had started to form at the far corners of her eyes. Her neck was already sagging just a bit. In two years she would be, in the eyes of shallow, materialist Los Angeles, way over the hill.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  I shook off all the negative crap in my head, forced myself to smile. “I’m wondering how much I’m going to enjoy tonight.” As soon as I said it, I believed it.

  She rested her head on my shoulder, just like she was a normal human being.

  * * *

  Patience made sure I brought my handcuffs with me up to her room. That didn’t bother me one bit. As soon as she closed the door, she was all over me. Clawing at my clothes, licking my face like I was a lollipop. “Get this out of here,” she said, tugging at my shirt. She nearly ripped the buttons off pulling it over my head.

  “All right, all right,” I said, pushing her off of me. I took my undershirt off and threw it on the bed. I tried to remove her skirt. She slapped my hands away.

  “You first,” she said, unbuckling my belt.

  “Where’s, ah, your friend?” I helped her with my pants.

  “Finesse will be here when it’s time,” she said. “She’s not into foreplay.”

  Had she not been running her hands in and out of my boxers, I might have asked more, better questions.

  “Let’s go!” she said. She dragged my shorts to my ankles and shoved me backwards onto the bed.